Network Warrior, published by O’Reilly Media, Inc. (Suprise!), was very surprising as it was a lot more entertaining than books in the field of Network Engineering usually are. Even those of us who get excited when speaking about the myriad of different network topics can admit that sometimes even reading about the stuff we love can bore us to sleep. This book however proved quite enjoyable.

Network Warrior bills itself as “Everything you need to know that wasn’t on the CCNA exam” and that claim is quite accurate. The book is very Cisco centric, both covering configuration examples in CatOS (considered by most to be deprecated) and IOS. While I don’t come from a Cisco background (but just about every other background) I still found this book very enjoyable because it combined the Why with the How. I should explain…

Most books on network engineering topics, or even computer or technical topics in general, usually cover one of two sides of the field; either the history and theory behind a technology, or the implementation and maintenance of it’s solutions. I feel like this book joins the two. In doing so it really fills in the gaps that I found in my expertise where I either new about something, but not how to do it, or vice versa. By creating a bridge between the two author Gary A. Donahue provides the catalyst for several of those “Ah-Ha!” moments, even for seasoned professionals. You can read RFCs and IEEE specifications all day and sometimes still find that things click sometime later. I experienced this on a few occasions reading this book.

The main problem I had is that the book is entirely Cisco centric. There are absolutely no examples of other environments, equipment, or software. It is not very difficult to translate configuration options between platforms for an experienced professional. The author is even very open about the Cisco nature of the topics within. It says so on the cover. The issue for me is that such focus is a little disconcerting. Depending on who’s numbers you believe the current industry market appears to have Cisco Systems receiving about 70% of the revenue and 50% of the shipping units (as you can see by the difference of revenue versus units shipped, you might be able to infer something about their cost). So, if they have 50% of the units in production (again, a number continually in debate) around the world, then why are they the only representative in this book as well as others? I do not know, maybe it is just corporate culture.

Another problem I had was the reference to Cisco proprietary methods and protocols like EIGRP and Etherchannel. While these Cisco technologies as well as others may be sound I usually eschew any proprietary protocols or so called “standards” unless they are ratified by a standards body. In most cases there are standardized alternatives that can be used in their place. My two reasons for this stance are thus; one, if you design your network around proprietary technologies and protocols you are locking yourself in so that you are at the mercy of your vendor when it should be the other way around, and two, what good does it do you to learn something if one day you change jobs or purchase different equipment? What happened to many of the business that focused on an IBM hardware and software environment only? I think they probably had and are still having a difficult transition.

Other than that I felt the book was very solid and definitely worth the reading time for a budding Cisco professional or a experienced engineer looking to fill in the gaps. As always the book can be purchased on Amazon.com.